The thrust of my presenation was to discuss what we know about primary energy savings reduction in green house gas emission for LEED-certified buildings. Despite the fact that there are roughly 11,000 U.S. commercial buildings certified before Jan. 1, 2013 under LEED New Construction (NC), Core and Shell (CS), Existing Buildings (EB:OM), and LEED for Schools — all LEED programs that address whole building energy use — we have published data from just 2% of these buildings. This paltry amount of data is mostly gathered by voluntary submissions by building owners willing to share their energy data. You can bet that such data are skewed towards the better performing buildings.

And even so, the data available show that, on average, LEED-certified buildings show no significant source energy savings or reduction in GHG emission relative to comparable, non-LEED buildings. That was the thrust of my presentation.

Note that promoters of LEED certification continue to claim energy savings — but these claims are based on design projections not actual performance measurements. For instance, promoters of Ohio’s Green schools claim 33% reduction in energy use. But there has never been a study of energy used by Ohio’s LEED-certified schools to demonstrate this assumed savings. Such claims of energy savings are based on “faith” not “fact.”